Alex Christoforou
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle and The Duran’s Alex Christoforou discuss US President Donald Trump’s G20 threat of more tariffs on China if President Xi Jinping doesn’t show up to Japan and sit down for a summit with the President Trump.
Is this a new low in US diplomacy or another ‘art of the deal’ negotiating tactic from the Trump White House?
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Trump Threatens More Tariffs On China If President Xi Does Not Have G20 Meeting by The Duran
The Duran Quick Take: Episode 201. RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle and The Duran’s Alex Christoforou discuss US President Donald Trump’s G20 threat of more tariffs on China if President Xi Jinping doesn’t show up to Japan and sit down for a summit with the President Trump.
US President Donald Trump’s threat of more tariffs if Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn’t show up to the G20 summit is a “new low” for US diplomacy, crossing the line and threatening to unravel global trade, analysts tell RT.
China will agree to a trade deal with the US “because they have to,” Trump said on Monday, adding that new tariffs on Chinese goods will go into effect immediately if Xi does not attend the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan later this month. Washington and Beijing have been negotiating a new trade deal for months, without results.
“This is a new low in American diplomacy,” Sourabh Gupta, senior policy specialist at the Institute for China America Studies, told RT. “That an American president would advance and impose tariffs on a counterpart country if that country’s president did not consent to a sit-down bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a multilateral summit is absurd, to the point of being almost comical.”
China may take its time to respond, but will most likely accept the meeting, Gupta told RT, predicting that the next three weeks will witness “nervous times” in economic diplomacy between Beijing and Washington.
Meanwhile, advocates of free trade are horrified by Trump’s use of tariffs as a preferred method of international engagement.
“Trump promised all of this during his presidential campaign, but no one took him seriously. Now he is showing how much damage one man can do provided he has power and some very bad misunderstandings concerning how economics works,” Jeffrey A. Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research told RT. Trade between nations is a win-win situation for everyone, while Trump treats it as a game of winners and losers, he said.
Tariffs are a tool of impoverishment for everyone.
“A nation is not a single business with a balance sheet. The whole thing is ridiculous.But no one can seem to get to him to explain this,” he told RT. Trump’s goal to turn US trade deficits into surpluses is “absolutely inconsistent with the dollar’s status as the world reserve currency,” Tucker added. Moreover, Americans end up paying for the tariffs, not the nations getting targeted.
According to Gupta, the ultimatum suggests that Trump is not very confident in winning a drawn-out trade war with China, and might be trying to arrange a face-saving way to make a deal with Xi before the 2020 election.
“At the end of the day, China has significantly more to gain than lose from resolving the trade conflict,” Gupta said. “Being a country that is laser focused on its interests and not its grievances – unlike the US – I am confident that Beijing will sit down across the table from Mr. Trump and his team and make a good faith effort to resolve the tensions.”
Whether that good faith effort will be sufficient remains to be seen.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
America (and much of the west) is mired in the “Fake it till you make it”. It is not confined to Trump though he excels at this type of masturbatory fantasy. Lord knows the Democrats are a close second and at times surge into the lead. Other countries have their own “Fake it till you make it” issues (the UK comes to mind). But the blindness of their elites (deep state, whatever you want to call it) to get their shit together means that they default to astroturfing, spin doctoring and out and out lying. And the MSM wholeheartedly promotes… Read more »
Thank you, Alex and Peter. A great analysis!
Trump is becoming really tiresome. Now just today he repeats the moronic mantra that the MICs and the CONs cranked him up with:
“We’re protecting Germany from Russia, and Russia is getting billions and billions of dollars in money from Germany” for its gas, Trump told reporters at the White House during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Protecting Germany from Russia? Good grief. Today, millions of Germans are scratching their heads thinking “What a dummkopf”.
Keep the nonsense up, fellows. America will yet become the world’s premier laughing stock.
I’m very happy to announce today the incredible, fantastic and most magnificent alliance we have with Mr. Dud and his Polish apple polishers, or as Mr. Sikorsky Applebaum would say, ‘bobbing for greenbacks and petty change’. We also thank him for being, along with Ukraine, the most incredible bulwark against the Kremlin empire’s plans to march on the Reichstag and install Merkel as the new quisling leader of a united East Germany with Prussia, from which Russia derives its name. We together can be confident that perpetual sanctions against Russia will create many years of bumper crops of Polish apples… Read more »
the Mafia doesn’t do Win-Win. The Mafia is all about domination and control, and that’s Win-Lose.
The US worldview can only comprehend China’s submission. Nothing else will do.
“At the end of the day, China has significantly more to gain than lose from resolving the trade conflict,” Gupta said. “Being a country that is laser focused on its interests and not its grievances – unlike the US – I am confident that Beijing will sit down across the table from Mr. Trump and his team and make a good faith effort to resolve the tensions.”
Unfortunately, the us and the dump can’t act “in good faith” and are untrustworthy. China and President Xi understand this perfectly well.
You don’t really understand human psychology. There exists a thin red line in the psyche that when crossed, elicits a hard line reaction and battle lines drawn, whether it be in trade or blood. Washington’s fired the opening shots across the bow of that thin, red line. Probably, the only reason it’s not yet gone viral is the possibility of Trump being out of a job soon. But the damage’s already been done. Make no mistake of it.